Single What? Female...

It's Patriot's Day back east...

But here in Sacramento, it's just beautiful. Spring has truly sprung with all the trees out in full leaf and palm. It is in the 70's and breezy and I am reminded that one does not rush around here. You sit, you stroll, you linger, hang back. It's niiiiiiice.

My hostess, Sheila, lives just outside the city in a lovely neighborhood called Fair Oaks. She took me 'round the neighborhood which is literally in full flower (who DOESN'T have a garden here?) and then dropped me off by the main coffee shop this morning so I could take care of my interviewing...and eat a GIGANTIC cinnamon bun.

Here I am, trying to not eat horrible and/or fattening things on this trip and well, I gave that up last night. I have in-laws in the area who were kind enough to have us over for dinner last night. We feasted on baked potatoes and serious meatloaf (stuffed with cheese!!). I knew then that I was going to eat this weekend.

Hence the bagel this morning, the cinnamon bun, the positively lovely hand-done falafel made at the the Sunflower Drive-In restaurant (all vegetarian and FRESH) and the soon to be grilled New York steaks....

In between all this, I did actually talk to people.

At the cafe, as the sugar kicked in from the cinnamon bun, I enjoyed a conversation with three generations of women (well, two really as the young granddaughter did not join in the discussion at the time :p). The daughter gets asked "what are you" fairly frequently "and nobody ever guesses right either," she said. I admit it...I wanted to know, and did everything in my power not to go there, but her mother suddenly said, "You want to guess?", chuckling. I did give it a shot saying possibly Latina, due to her olive-toned skin and dark eyes, but I was wrong. She is French and Chinese. She does not get annoyed when asked, and has not been one to celebrate her heritage. It's more that she knows her roots, but it's not all that important. Her daughter, a fair-skinned, blue-eyed, brown-haired little girl (so adorable!) has not hint of her mother's Asian heritage. The grandmother remarked "Do you think people are going to look at her and know that she is a quarter Chinese?" I can honestly say "no". The ladies had a friend with them who, as coming from a military family, believes she has "a drop of a little bit of everything" in her. She does not know all her roots, but finds that uniquely American. She had been approached by a gentleman at a bar who asked her the question. He apparently was quite taken aback by the fact that she did not seem to know her roots. He was of 100% Portuguese descent, was very proud of that fact and was passing on the traditions to his family that had been passed on to him. "Aren't you proud of your roots?" he had asked, and she just replied that she was proud to be American and otherwise, did not really know her roots...and what's so wrong with that? She also said that, after living all over the country growing up, she was never asked "What are you?" until she came to California, hence she does believe that it may be a regional issue.
At the Sunflower restaurant, I ran into some students (okay, student age...I could be wrong on the student thing...I am old enough now to look at certain people and just automatically think 'Oh my God! they're so YOUNG!') and asked them about their experiences with the questions and one of them, Max, told me how when he was in 8th grade, just after 2001 (!!!), he was living in Kentucky. A little girl came up to him and asked him "Are you a terrorist?" "Well, I figured I was the darkest person in the neighborhood at the time and she just thought I looked [Arabic]". Since then, he's been asked a few times but doesn't see it as a big deal and wonders why everybody else seems to make such a big deal about it.

A common ponderance for sure.

All right, gotta get ready for Los Angeles. But I gotta say, Fair Oaks is a mighty fair place and I definitely would not mind coming back.

posted by funkweee @ 3:50 PM